Reality Cafe :: Chemical Weapons Used in Fallujah :: November

Political, AmericanaNovember 8, 2005 9:24 pm

From the Independent:

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon. [link]

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a Pentagon spokesman, admitted on Democracy Now! that the US had used white phosphorus during the assault on Fallujah, but insisted that it was not a chemical weapon and that its use was perfectly legal.

Wikipedia seems to confirm his assertion:

Use of white phosphorus is not specifically banned by any treaty [link]

However:

the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (Protocol III) prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilian populations or by air attack against military forces that are located within concentrations of civilians. The United States is among the nations that have not signed this protocol. [link]

Colonel Boylan appears to be a complete idiot. Technical hairsplitting about the legality of weapons simply doesn’t work when pictures of their horrific effects are right there. He couldn’t even lie effectively. This wasn’t some uniform-worshipping media wretch like CNN’s Aaron Brown: it was Amy Goodman. The woman who wouldn’t give Clinton a bye. Why did he agree to be interviewed by her in the first place?

Rushdie made a telling point yesterday. He said that never before in history had the truth been such a debated quantity. Never before had reality itself been so fiercely contested. Of course, he was talking about the worldviews of terrorists and states, but the point holds in general. A new documentary alleging the use of chemical weapons by US troops in Fallujah will be broadcast by Italian state TV today. The news will barely make a ripple in mainstream US media. How different will reality be for Italians and Americans tomorrow?

Watch the segment or read a transcript here. Try the Rai news website for the documentary. The CS Monitor has a summary of related media reports.

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A March ‘05 publication by the US Army confirms that US soldiers used white phosphorus offensively in the Battle of Fallujah. This directly contradicts recent statements made by the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as a previous statement by the US State Department — located at
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive_Index/Illegal_Weapons_in_Fallujah.html — that WP was used “very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes”.

Here is the story on artillery use in Fallujah from the March/April edition of the US Army’s “Field Artillery Magazine” :
http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/Previous_Editions/05/mar-apr05/PAGE24-30.pdf

The article specifically states:

“The munitions we brought to this fight were . . . illumination and white phosphorous (WP, M110 and M825), with point-detonating (PD), delay, time and variable-time (VT) fuzes.”

“WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired ’shake and bake’ missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.”

What the article does not say, however, is that there is no way you can use white phosphorus at ground level without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren’t just psychological in nature.

This claim of “shake and bake” is further confirmed in a news article by an embedded journalist at the time. See
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/11/military/iraq/19_30_504_10_04.txt

“Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused. . . they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call “shake ‘n’ bake” into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.”

You can also direct people to the video of the Italian broadcast, which made the original claims, which is online at
http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?u=http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/default_02112005.asp
and at
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/nov/video/dnB20051108a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=9:20

Hope this helps,
Mark Kraft
http://insomnia.livejournal.com

Mark Kraft — November 9, 2005 @ 7:10 am
Thank you for the detailed information, Mark.

raven — November 9, 2005 @ 11:58 am
Troubling … very troubling.

libertarian — November 9, 2005 @ 2:26 pm
This is sickening.

Baraka — November 9, 2005 @ 10:45 pm
Troubling, but perhaps untrue:
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2005/11/ablution_exclus.html

Raphael — November 10, 2005 @ 4:50 am
It’s high time…the American Government and its’s exploits are stopped. Haven’t they killed enough…how many more innocent lives will they sacrifice for their greed for “oil”.

Sakshi — November 11, 2005 @ 2:10 am
Raphael–the author of the passage you linked to (1) points out an inconsistency in different stories relating to the effects of the phosphorus (2) States that antiwar activists are the only ones viewed in the documentary, which is thus immediately suspect. The first point is legitimate, and certainly we need more information. The second would have made sense except its rather stupid to imply that because someone is against the war now–or indeed at any time–this automatically means their testimony of events is wrong. Also, the link to that soldier’s website on “THe Daily Ablution’s” page claims that the soldier’s website is decorated with a death to america image of some sort. Perhaps that might have been the case; certainly I don’t see any such graphic on the man’s website. The Daily Ablution also makes that by now laughable claim of “liberal bias” in the media which should automatically discredit anyone who utters it. Yes, I am stating this without offering proof, but there can be a debate about that another time.

I for one don’t see the point in differentiating between different kinds of weapons except insofar as there are legal/treaty issues. If there is a reasonable certainty that civilians would perish in an attack, then that is wrong. If you accept that, and I believe the principle is enshrined in all manner of laws, the attack on Fallujah, and the many others since, were not only illegal, but fundamentally immoral.

This kind of messy complication that arises from fighting an urban war is just another reason in that long, dismal list of why you don’t go invading foreign countries that don’t pose a threat to you or anyone else…

AH — November 11, 2005 @ 3:34 pm
that the Jihadis will not think twice before using even Nuclear Weapons on Americans. But then, that is the difference. That is the reason why ‘the willing’ claim to have gone into Iraq in the first place, the third place rather (after supposed presence of WMDs and saving the reagion from Saddam).

Sachin Kumar — November 11, 2005 @ 10:01 pm
Guys,

Apologies for spoiling your righteous indignation, but white phospohrous are not exactly chemical weapon. it is debunked
here ,
here ,
here,
here ,
here ,
here ,
here ,
here ,
and
here ,

This is just in a long list of Anti- Bush Memes like “Bush lied, Kids died”

Regards

Gaurav — November 19, 2005 @ 10:32 am
Welcome, Gaurav. If you’ll read the post above, I do mention that WP is itself not specifically listed as a chemical weapon. But according to the CWC, a chemical weapon is “any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm.”

Even if you don’t want to split hairs over what is or is not a chemical weapon, the pattern of deception is clear (hope you read this other post). Official statements went from “no, we never used WP” to “yes, we used it, but only for illumination or obfuscation” to (now) “yes, we used it against insurgents.” Isn’t that troubling enough?

raven — November 19, 2005 @ 11:47 am
Gaurav, sorry: the spam blocker seems to have eaten up the links that you posted. Email them to me if you feel like it. Thanks.

raven — November 19, 2005 @ 12:03 pm
Hi raven

Dont be cruel, I did lot of searching for those links .

What you can do though is go to InstaPundit and search for phospohrus.
I got all the links from there.

What you call deception is in my view incompetence, for the reason that even in US roll of honour soldiers have received honour for using white phosporus (the list and citation is publuc and has been always so). If it was deception by US Army(which I dont think it is)they certainly did a shoddy job of it.

“any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm.”

I think it is a bit of stretch for using this definition of chemical weapons for white phosphorus whose only results of chemical rections are fire or highly irritating but not lethal gas (unless you are very near or take high amount of it, which can happen with many “normal” gases).
Phosphorus are not very useful for incendiary purposes either, Soldier use it for smoking enemy combatants (who are in entrenched postion)out in order to minimize damage to other people.
Further the pictures shows the corpses with their skin disfigured (molten ?? or caramalized ??, exaggeration) BUT their clothes intact to my knowledge phosphorus does not do it (either due to fire or due to noxious fumes as a result of burning).
The disfigurement might have been from desert heat or something.
Yes Phosphorus is nasty, but as nasty as getting your guts ripped by shrapnels or blown by daisy cutters, or getting your brain blown by machine gun bullet.
To call this as chemical weapon in my view trivializing “real chemical weapons” like sarin or Orange (I hope everyone has seen enough english movies ).

Regards

Gaurav — November 19, 2005 @ 1:04 pm
Raven

I think this should clarify the matter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

PS. I am not saying that death by White Phosphorus is not NASTY, I think all war deaths are, but I consider use of chemical weapons are serious allegation and to use it to settle partisan/ideological enimity very disappointing.

Regards

Gaurav — November 19, 2005 @ 2:07 pm
Gaurav, you’re right, of course. WP is not explicitly listed in the CWC . And I’m afraid I simply don’t know enough to have a debate on its chemical properties.

As for “corpses with their skin disfigured BUT their clothes intact”, this from the CSM:

Yet the claims made by an Italian television station - that women and children were found with melted skin despite the fact that their clothes were unharmed - are consistent with the action of white phosphorous, scientists say.

raven — November 19, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
Good news

Yes, I’ve heard of “decaf.” What’s your point?

Joseph — November 3, 2006 @ 8:50 pm

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